


To Find Oneself

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/F, Healing, Orient Express, POV Molly, POV Molly Hooper, Romance, Trains, Travel, Vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:43:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5978941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Moriarty's "return" and all the heartache involved with that, Molly needs time and space to get her head together and to let herself heal. She decides to take a sabbatical and use the time to travel, taking many of the different journeys offered aboard the modern day Orient Express. But when she encounters Irene Adler on her first trip on the train, her plans slowly become different...and better than she had imagined they would be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Find Oneself

**Author's Note:**

> So ages ago I found a list of AUs written by **frostlawyer** on Tumblr, and the one that caught my eye for this story was " _incredibly long crosscountry train ride AU_ ," though there's actually going to be quite a few of those. So far I'm planning on limiting the parts to the actual train rides but we'll see. This is also a (belated) answer to the Week 1 prompt over at **sherlockladylove** on Tumblr of " _Going away_."

Oh, she just needed to get away. Just…leave London and get away from everything and everyone. It was all such a huge mess, all of it. Magnussen, Moriarty, Sherlock…it was all just such an awful confusing mess and she wanted to put space and distance between her and it. As much as she could for as long as possible.

She had always dreamed of taking a long train ride across Europe, much like the famed Orient Express ride in her favourite Agatha Christie novel, though perhaps without the murder to go along with it. And when she found out that the Orient Express was still in service, albeit with a few different routes, and she could arrange for herself a few trips scattered over several months, it was quite tempting. Mike said she had more than enough time saved up for a few trips, or if she really wanted to, she could take a sabbatical, make it one extended trip. Lord knew she deserved it, he’d said, with everything.

She looked at the trips and seriously considered them all. She could go from London to Venice on the 17th of April to the 21st, then Venice to Paris via Budapest in May, from the 25th to the 28th, and then if she took Mike up on his offer of a sabbatical she could spend a few months in Paris like she'd always dreamed of and then make a trip from Paris to Istanbul in August. At the beginning of September she could go back to Venice and then at the end of the month go to Prague and then return to London. Or even wait until October and then go to Vienna and then return to London, if she chose.

Provided she didn’t fall in love with one of those cities on her trip and decide to say fuck it all to London entirely.

Yes, the more she thought about it, the more the sabbatical and the trip on the Orient Express sounded like _just_ what she needed. Though, in case she changed her mind, she would make one booking at a time, starting with London to Venice. Oh, she would take the sabbatical, just in case. She desperately needed the time away before she did something silly or stupid like throw away her life’s work over…everything.

She very well still _could_ , but distance might give her perspective.

It had all been so complicated. Sherlock had been gone and she’d had to have as normal a life as possible in order to full the world into thinking he really was dead. It had been hard at first, terribly hard, but eventually it had gotten easier, especially when Tom had become part of the picture. She had liked him, had grown to love him, but it had killed her to have to keep a part of her life hidden, keep it to herself. And then when Sherlock came back…well, that had been the beginning of the end.

The wedding of John and Mary had just been the final nail in the coffin, she supposed, though she didn’t realize it for a time. 

When she did, she and Tom went their separate ways, just in time for her to realize Sherlock had gone and put all his wonderful beautiful talents at risk by slipping back to drugs. If she had been truthful, she had seen the telltale signs again for months. When he’d been dragged to her lab he may have gotten the others to believe it had been a one-off for a case but she knew. He’d been doing it for some time. Small amounts, but steady.

And then…then Christmas happened, then his sequestration and banishment, then his overdose. The fool was lucky he didn’t die! She’d been so angry but really, there wasn’t time. Someone was trying to resurrect Moriarty from the dead. Not physically, of course, but everything the monster had stood for. It couldn’t be his right hand man; he was locked up in a hole no one could penetrate. Magnussen would have been the next logical choice, but he was dead and gone, thanks to Sherlock. That left Sherlock with a puzzle to solve, a reason not to be banished, and, she had hoped, a reason to stay clean.

She’d been half lucky.

They’d caught the mastermind before the British government was brought to its knees, but not before Mycroft was critically injured. Not before Mary and John’s daughter was kidnapped. Not before Lestrade suffered an injury that might or might not force him into early retirement.

Not before she was taken and held hostage by a man she had thought she could trust.

And now…well, now it appeared Sherlock was pushing them all away, content to be off in his own miserable corner of the world, alone until the bitter end. John and Mary were still trying, but she couldn’t, not right now. Not while she was trying to come to grips with things herself.

So yes, a sabbatical and train rides across the continent and perhaps a chance to clear her head and mend her heart and find herself again sounded like _just_ what she needed.

And so, she’d start with one trip and go from there.


End file.
